


Punishment

by yamiaainferno



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, No Mercy Route, Spoilers - No Mercy Route, i didn't know how graphic the 'graphic depictions of violence' had to be but i checked just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6185026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamiaainferno/pseuds/yamiaainferno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wake up and everything is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like, you can listen to this playlist while you read. It's in no particular order, so feel free to hit shuffle if you like.  
> 
> 
>   
> [**!!! CLICK HERE !!!**](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3BWOd91nVV-4xtDehYJIAITdn8HAosVa)  
>  (Some videos contain flashing images.)  
> 

You wake up and everything is wrong. Your whole body, your very soul is aching. There’s panic pulling hysterically at the edges of your mind, pulsing in time with your heartbeat, but it's an awareness more than an actual emotion.

You stumble to your feet. Your body feels resistant, foreign. It takes a moment to get your bearings. There’s a branch in your hand, broken off during your fall, the end is jagged and sharp. You give it an experimental swing, and then a test a few stabbing motions with it.

You turn, teetering slightly, towards the opening behind you, and are unsurprised when a golden flower greets you with a bright smile.

\--

Asriel tries to trick you, but you dodge, albeit clumsily. You wonder why you’re having such difficulty moving, for a moment, but it’s quickly replaced by the thought that it doesn’t matter how you move as long as you keep moving.

You feel a grin tug at the corners of your mouth as he screams at you in frustration, but the muscles are ultimately too heavy and your face remains blank.

When Mom arrives, everything gets fuzzy. You had planned on killing her as soon as you saw her, but instead you find yourself shuffling obediently after her as she coddles you and holds your hand through puzzles that you already know the answer to.

It pisses you off, and the anger drowns out your confusion over what your thoughts mean.

\--

You kill the Froggit quickly, before she notices it’s there. You breathe in the dust that scatters as your LV increases.

It’s the greatest feeling in the world.

\--

You spend a long time hunting in the ruins. Mom won’t be back until you’re ready, you have as long as you need. They start to hide from you, after a while. The more troublesome they are to find, the more you make sure it hurts.

Every LV up feels amazing, and with each one the ache in your chest lessens. You can almost move normally now; it’s getting easier. This, you realize, is what you have to do. Kill, get stronger. Eventually, you think, the pain will stop entirely.

\--

You look in the mirror and smile as big as you can. Not big enough. It twitches stubbornly, but that doesn’t bother you much.

Your name is Chara. You repeat it over and over, pressing the letters into your memory as you grin wolfishly at your reflection.

\--

You wait to kill Mom on purpose now; you want the pie. When you do though, it’s so satisfying that you don’t even notice the tears running down your face. She shouldn’t have tried to replace you.

It’s stopped bothering you that you don’t understand your own thoughts most of the time. You just need to keep moving.

\--

It’s obnoxious, how Asriel thinks you need his help. He’s always so clingy. He solves the puzzles for you, as if you don’t already know all of the answers. It saves time, though. You put up with it.

You hate puzzles.

\--

Sans tries to scare you, pathetically enough. You grin at him, face hardly moving, hoping he’ll do something to challenge you, to stop you. Instead, he runs away.

He will regret it.

\--

Papyrus surprises you. Your grin falters and your hands tremble as you stare uncomprehendingly at his open arms.

You don’t understand. You can’t understand. Your chest flares with sudden pain, and you clutch it, wheezing. You feel sick. This is wrong. This isn’t you. This isn’t what you wanted.

“H-HUMAN…ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” You can hear the fear in his voice; he’s terrified of you. You can also hear genuine concern; he cares about you. There’s a struggle going on within you that you can’t even begin to process. Everything hurts. You scream, frustrated, confused, in agony.

What’s your name again?

He takes a step towards you and your fist flies out of its own accord, knocking his head clean off. He gapes in shock. You stare at your clenched fist, uncomprehending.

Papyrus tells you that he still believes in you, and you laugh hysterically. It’s the funniest thing you’ve heard in years. What an idiot. You laugh so hard you fall to the ground, clutching yourself and shaking. You laugh so hard that you cry, endlessly, even as you hiss out loud at yourself to stop.

Eventually, you get up, but you’re not smiling.

\--

That stupid skeleton messed everything up. You won’t stop crying. You’ve managed to get your smile back, but it’s wobbly, and drops at the stupidest things. Your chest is a raw, gaping wound, throbbing with constant pain. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to keep moving. It hurts to kill, but you don’t stop. You can’t stop. You wonder why.

You obliterate everything in your path now. You barely have to touch them, and they explode into dust. Everything is so pathetically weak. It’s boring.

When Undyne kills you, again and again and again, you feel like you could burst with joy. Finally, a challenge. Finally, someone who might be able to stop you.

\--

She doesn’t.

\--

By the time you reach Hotland, you’re mostly under control again. Your smile is eternal, no more random wobbles or frowns. The tears have slowed to a trickle that you barely feel and no longer blurs your vision obnoxiously. Your hands hardly even tremble in resistance as you cut down monster after monster.

The pain in your chest is even worse, but you persevere.

“It’s hopeless.” You whisper. You’ve started talking to yourself now, to that ever-present ache in your soul. You hate it. You want it to die. “You can’t stop me.” You insist. “You can’t do anything.”

You don’t think that the words coming out of your mouth are yours, but you’re so pissed off and in so much pain that you can’t process what that means. You just let yourself keep moving forwards.

\--

Mettaton puts up a brave face. An actor to the end, but it’s a disappointing performance. You obliterate him, and feel nothing but rage when he goes down in one hit. You were hoping for a challenge. Pathetic sack of shit.

Whatever. You can have fun with him in other ways. Unlike the others, Mettaton leaves a body. It takes a minute for you to find a piece of him you can carry, and even longer for you to detach it. You manage it, though, and your grin threatens to split your face as you start dragging it behind you as you head back to Alphys’ lab.

“Aaaalphysss!” You sing, sickly sweet, as you throw your hunk of garbage against the door to her real lab. You know they’re in there. Where else would they go? It’s safe enough for them, at the moment. You don’t know how to open the door yet. But you know that she’s watching the outside. She’d be stupid not to.

“Look what’s happened to your friend, Alphys! He’s dead.” You’re starting to really cry again, proper shaking sobs that choke your voice, but you don’t care. She’s keeping you from your mission by hiding all the others away. She deserves to suffer, and you know exactly which buttons to press. “It’s aaaall your fault, you fuck up! Why didn’t you let him in before you locked the door? You could have saved him Alphys! In fact, the only reason I was able to hurt him at all is because you _had_ to give him a body! You just _had_ to make yourself feel important again!”

You shout insults at the door for a time, throwing in some jabs about Undyne for good measure, but the lack of a response bores you before too long. You wander off, telling her excitedly about how you’ll be back, as soon as you’ve had a talk with Dad. You tell her that you’ll find a way in eventually, that you’ll kill every single one of them.

You know with complete confidence that she’ll be dead by then. You hate yourself utterly, even as you beam with pride.

\--

Nothing else important happens for a long time. Everything goes down in a single hit. It’s boring.

The dust is so thick around you and your chest is so tight with pain that every breath is an agonized, choked wheeze. You’re coated in it; it’s in your hair, your clothes, your lungs. It sticks to you insistently, even as you try absently to shake it off. The only places clean are two singular tracks underneath your eyes, still wet with never-ending tears.

The rush when you gain LV blots out the ache, gives you a dizzying thrill. It’s the only thing that keeps you moving.

\--

Your hands refuse to pick up the knife. When you try, they tremble so badly that it clatters to the floor. So you try again. And again.

Again.

“Don’t you have better things to waste your energy on?” You hiss, barely aware that you’re speaking. You just know that you need that knife. It’ll make you stronger. It’ll allow you to get more LV, which will make the pain go away.

It falls again, and you want to scream.

When you finally manage to grasp it, you laugh in triumph. Your hands still resist—you have to hold it with both to make sure that you don’t let go. You wait, smiling and staring at your twitching fingers.

It doesn’t take long at all, and you’re almost disappointed as you pass the knife into a single hand. You still have to keep it in a death grip, focusing a lot of will on keeping your fingers closed, but you can swing it. That’s all you need.

\--

When you stumble out, Asriel is there, prattling on and on and on. You ignore him, continuing forwards, retrieving the keys. He follows you, appearing and disappearing, just talking and talking and talking.

“ _But nobody came._ ” He laughs bitterly as he says it, disappearing. You have to stop, wheezing painfully as you clutch your chest. It hurts. More tears slide down your cheeks to the carpet below.

“He’s _dead_ .” You snarl at yourself through the clenched teeth of your smile. “Stop feeling sorry for him.” You manage to take a step forward, and then another. “If you think you can make me feel sympathy for that _idiot_ , after what he did to me, you’re wrong.”

\--

You head downstairs, and he’s waiting for you. He starts talking again, and every word makes your chest throb, but you keep walking. So annoying.

“…wouldn’t hesitate to KILL each other if we got in each other’s way.” He laughs again, emptily. You stop.

He’s in your way. Asriel is interrupting you, making you _hurt_ . You glance over your shoulder at him, a few paces behind you. He looks suddenly uneasy. You turn fully, smile turning saccharine sweet-- your creepy face. _Revenge_ , the thought pulses through you like a drum, over and over.

He shakes, you step forward. He yells, you step forward again. He disappears, popping back up behind you; he pleads. You turn and walk, not bothering to take your steps one at a time. Your chest pounds at you, the pain screaming at you to stop, in direct opposition to the pure malice driving your steps. You feel like you’re going to pass out.

You lunge, and he’s gone. Too slow. You scream as your knife connects with the ground.

\--

“heya.” Sans appears. Pain flares once more in your chest, but your smile widens. You were wondering where he’d been hiding. You still feel dizzy. The movements your body makes hardly seem connected to you anymore, seeming to happen no matter how much the agony in your chest wracks your body. Good, you suppose, that it can’t stop you from moving forwards. It needs to learn who’s in control. To stay out of your way.

You move towards him. He’s weak. Pathetically, hopelessly weak. A tap of your finger could kill him. Offensively, he’s no better. He’s just like Mettaton—all bravado and threats, but nothing to back it up. You take another step, heedless of his words.

You slam into the ground, goring yourself on bones that appear out of nowhere. You look up in shock, only to see a grinning, floating skull. It breathes brilliant white fire, and you die.

When you come back, you’re laughing hysterically, giddy, even as your heart constricts painfully. He hates you. He wants you to die so much. This is the real power of magic, with no stupid monster sentimentality holding it back.

You think this will be fun.

\--

It takes too long to get past his first attack. Anger is boiling within you now, red hot. Your body resists your attempts to dodge, sometimes outright throwing itself at his attacks. Your vision is swimming and you’re not sure if it’s from tears, your injuries, or simply the pain. You can feel your fingers trembling around the knife, dangerously close to simply hurtling it out the window.

So you die, over and over and over. Resetting, reaching back through time and plucking out a new timeline to throw your soul into, is a monumental effort. Something is holding you back, desperately trying to pin you down long enough for oblivion to swallow you completely.

Eventually, you last long enough to find an opening; just for a moment. It’s enough. You run at Sans and slash, pouring all of your rage into the blow.

Your knife meets empty air, and you blink in confusion for a moment before whipping around with a hiss. _What_.

Sans laughs at you with a shrug and a wink, and then you die.

\--

He dodges every attack. In every timeline, no matter how or when you come after him, he sidesteps you as easily as if he had your every move memorized. It pisses you off.

You focus on forcing your traitorous body to move. You’re dying, rotting slowly from the inside out again, you’re sure of it. Your entire world consists of that pain, Sans’ stupid smile, and your knife. The meeting of the latter two will make the former disappear. It has to.

Another pause. You start to move, only to find yourself pinned by his magic. You struggle in vain.

“c’mon, buddy. are you listening?” His voice changes to something pleading, and you immediately know what he’s trying to do. No. You refuse. You open your mouth to scream, to drown him out, but your voice is choked by tears. He lets you go. No more attacks. His guard is down.

The pain in your chest explodes and, at _last_ , breaks free.

\--

You collapse, heaving and puking, to the floor. Your knife clatters from your hand and you swat it away from you as hard as you can in a panic, sending it skittering across the floor to the other end of the hall.

Your name is Frisk. Frisk Frisk Frisk _Frisk Frisk Frisk_. Not Chara. You say it over and over again, out loud, because you can still feel them pounding against the back of your skull, and you’re scared that if you don’t remind yourself you’ll forget. You look up at Sans pleadingly, desperate and confused, begging for help.

Sans’ face is blank, expression unfathomable. But then he smiles, opening his arms and even though your legs feel like jelly and everything hurts you stumble to your feet because you’re just so _relieved_ —

You’re skewered on a dozen bones that rise out of the ground, and he tells you with empty eyes to never come back.

You should have reset the second you had control. You spend a moment stunned, _hurt_ , and then you scramble for it, reaching desperately for a fresh timeline. It’s too late—your save is already being loaded.

\--

You scream. You’re alive again, writhing on the floor of the hall, clutching your chest and howling. You’re being ripped apart from the inside out. It’s unbearable. You yell that you can’t be stopped, that you’ll kill everything and everyone in your way. You sob that you’re not going to let anyone else die. You scream and cry and scream and scream and _scream_ until your throat is raw and bleeding, and then you just weep, face down on the ground.

Eventually, your shaking slows down. The agony subsides to a sharp, insistent throb. Bearable, but only just. Wheezing and shaking, you force yourself to stand and pick up your knife from where it fell to the ground. You glare down the hall at Sans, who has been standing there for a while now, watching.

You’re not smiling. You want nothing more than to kill him, again and again and again. Destroy the last thing keeping the ache in your soul alive and fighting. You just want it to end.

You charge, he dodges. You die.

Again.

\--

He tries the same trick, and this time you lunge before he finishes his sentence. He dodges with an easy side-step, taunting you with a wink and teasing words. He had never let his guard down at all. He had never even considered offering you real mercy.

Suddenly, you feel yourself being dragged backwards. Your chest constricts so tight you can’t breathe. Your soul is drifting back, all the way back, all of your progress about to erased.

“NO!!” You snarl, furious. Your soul is forced back into the present. The effort is tortuous; everything in you fights against it, fights to keep the reset going, but the rage that wells up in response is enough to blind, enough to force your broken, aching soul back into the right timeline.

You’re not when you were before, you realize, just in time to dodge an attack that Sans used on you a few minutes ago. Your soul tries to flee again, and soon you’re blinking in and out of the timeline as you play a desperate tug-of-war to keep everything you’ve done from falling apart.

This isn’t _fair_.

\--

You and Sans have both long since lost count of how many times you’ve died. You’ve blotted out everything except the hate, the anger, the need to kill. You let it fuel your determination, and let that carry you through every death, every attempted reset, every dodged attack and jabbing taunt.

But finally, at last, you notice that he’s slowing down. You push harder in response, and you sense him starting to doubt. You can win. You’re _going_ to win. A grin slowly pushes its way back onto your face.

Sans keeps smiling, but you can see him sweat.

\--

You’re getting stronger, better, finding it easier and easier to make your body behave. He’s lagging, predictable, using the same attacks every timeline and by now you have them all memorized. Even his penultimate attack, the hardest thing he’s thrown at you so far, only kills you a few times. You’re so full of spite and hate that the ache is drowning in it, muffled. You can feel it, throbbing, beating against your chest like a fist, but you can ignore it. It fills you with a sick sense of pleasure. _Watch_ , the thought runs through your mind, _watch and do nothing while I kill him._

You are so, so looking forward to killing him. Sans has long overstayed his welcome at this point. You wish he wasn’t so weak—you’d love to take your time with him. You run from lasers, not unscathed but staying ahead for the most part, only to be stopped in your tracks as Sans’ magic constricts around your soul, lifting you up. You prepare yourself to jump off of whatever he slams you into.

You don’t get the chance, though. He doesn’t let you go, and your face smashes violently into the stone ceiling. Still, he keeps going, swinging you around and breaking your thin, fragile body on any hard surface within his reach. You feel ribs snap like twigs, blood pours down your face from a broken nose, a collision with a pillar at a bad angle sends at least two teeth flying.

Eventually he slows down, the impacts softer and softer, before eventually you just sink to the ground, shattered. Sans looks down on you, panting, a manic look on his face. Desperation and, you relish this, _fear_. You grin, your mouth a horror show, and giggle softly. You see him cringe.

You try to stand, only to find yourself pushed back down immediately, pressing your mess of a rib cage hard into your lungs.

“i’m not done yet, kid.” He grins at you, recovering quickly. “you’ve still gotta see my ‘special attack’, after all.” You glare at him, still wheezing from the impact with the floor, and wait.

He doesn’t do anything. You continue to stare at him expectantly, growing impatient. Sans chuckles at you, and you fantasize, not for the first time, about breaking all of his bones, one by one.

“that’s right. it’s literally nothing.” He winks, thinking he’s clever, but you just continue to glare. He laughs again, less sure of himself, but still infuriatingly smug. “i know i can’t beat you. you’re going to land a hit eventually. so i’m uh, i’m just gonna keep you there. forever. until you get bored and finally quit.” Another chuckle, this one faint and anxious.

Your blood boils. This is a desperate play that you both know will never work. He’s already exhausted, and has to expend energy keeping you held down. All you have to do is wait for him to burn out.

But it will be so, so boring.

\--

Early on, Sans tries talking to you. First just generic, half-hearted jabs, trying to goad you into giving up. After those prove unable to even make you emote, he switches tacks.

“so uh…i see you’re still doing that crying thing.” You don’t respond. You stopped caring about that a long time ago. “y’know, i was messing with you earlier, when i said that there might be a friend of mine in there somewhere. it was a trick. best case scenario, you really took it to heart, but i wasn’t holding my breath.” He says that last part as a joke, because skeletons don’t breathe. After a beat of total silence from you he lets out an awkward chuckle.

“but uh, the crying thing. it makes me wonder.” Your chest throbs, desperately. You can’t help but snicker at it. Still hoping, after all this time. _Pathetic_. Sans’ grin tightens in response to your amusement, eyes going black. “guess that’s pretty stupid of me, though. there’s nothing good left inside of you, is there? i wouldn’t be surprised if there was never anything there to begin with.”

You laugh, fully, at that. It’s excruciating, blood spilling from your mouth, but you can’t stop. _See?_ , the thought taunts you gleefully, _I told you so!_ Sans doesn’t speak again.

\--

It takes _forever_. A full 12-hour day, at least. It’s a long time to lay there, as injured as you are. It’s a long time to keep the ache in your chest under control, though much of its earlier fight seems to have drained away. You grit your teeth--still smiling, even now--when it becomes particularly resistant, the pain driving it back within you.

Never once do you consider resetting, or even going back to the beginning of the fight. You refuse to give Sans the satisfaction.

You also refuse to let your smile wane. It’s your way of taunting him, your way of coping with the pain. You smile as he struggles to keep his powers holding you down, to even keep his eyes open. You get impatient more than once, trying to stand before he’s completely out, resulting in painful collisions with the floor that leave you hissing and squirming, more blood leaking from your mouth, and, more importantly, _wasted time_.

\--

Sans has been completely still for almost a full minute now. His head has lolled forward slightly, his eyes are closed. There’s nothing pressing you down anymore. Holding your breath, you stand.

He doesn’t react. Your smile widens, so much that it physically hurts. You start towards him, every step slow, measured, silent. It’s a miracle you can still walk, considering. One squeaky shoe could mean hours more of boredom, of inaction. Of Sans not being dust on the ground. You get as close as you dare, raising your knife. You swing.

He’s gone.

“heh, did you think i actually—“ You don’t give him a chance to finish. You turn around and swing again, and this time, _finally_ , you hit home.

Sans staggers backwards, bleeding of all things, shock evident on his face. You realize you can’t move. Every muscle in your body is being held statue-still as you overflow with ecstasy and horror. You don’t care, though. Not that you can’t move, not that a skeleton is inexplicably bleeding. You did it.

“welp.” He laughs, looking down at his shaking, red hands. Blood leaks from the corners of his mouth. He stands, keeping an arm over his wound, spouting nonsense. He walks past you, and you can’t turn your head to follow where he goes.

“papyrus, you want anything?” His voice is weak, and even though you can’t see, you hear the sound of him falling apart.

You feel something inside of you shudder and die.

\--

You fall to your knees, mobile again, and LV up for the first time in forever. You laugh, hysterically, letting the high wash over you. The ache is gone. It’s _gone_. Everything is yours. You can kill everything, rip it all to shreds with your bare hands, and nothing can stop you.

You’re tempted to fight Sans again, just because you can. It’ll be easy with full control. You don’t, though. The idea of moving forward _at last_ is too alluring. Besides, this world is your toy now-- you can go back and torture him as much as you want later.

\--

“Dad, _please_! They’re coming, you have to…have to…” You hear Asriel sob as you approach Dad’s garden. Pathetic as always. As if that bumbling fool could stop you. He vanishes as you approach, fleeing like the coward he is.

Dad talks to you so gently, like he’s simply soothing a child throwing a tantrum. So understanding, so fatherly, so sickeningly familiar. It’s the same voice he would use when you talked Asriel into doing something bad.

The look on his face when you slit his stupid throat is the best you’ve ever seen him wear. You laugh, preparing your next blow.

But then you hear the sound of bullets all around you, and they crash into Dad from behind. He explodes into dust under your hands, his soul broken as soon as it appears. Asriel is there behind him, smiling at you nervously, shaking. You hiss, frustration rising to a lethal peak within you. You needed that soul. You had _plans_. He knew that, of course, but once again he’s chosen humanity over you.

He starts babbling, a desperate garble of pleas and platitudes trying to soothe your anger, but you don’t even bother to listen. You reach down, ripping him up by the roots and smile as he begs for mercy. When you realize he’s screaming with his real voice, not “Flowey”’s, it widens.

You hack him to pieces, slowly and methodically, letting out an elated giggle with each swing of your knife. You keep going long after he stops screaming. You’ve lost yourself in the giddiness of it all. He deserves it, after all this time. He betrayed you, he killed you, and then he had the audacity to turn his back on you as soon as someone better came along.

You bring your blade down again, and again, and again, with abandon, laughter growing louder, more and more manic. Then, suddenly, you choke, throat filling with copper. You look down, and realize that your knife has stabbed clean through your windpipe.

Your chest flares and _bursts_ as you let out a wet, strangled scream. Your arm, perfectly steady, unaffected, pulls the knife back out and plunges it directly into your heart.

You shatter. The world goes black.

There is no reset. There is only nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this work! This was originally supposed to be a multi-chaptered type thing where I explored the determination trio-- there was supposed to be a first chapter of a Neutral/Pacifist run, followed by character chapters of all three, and then a final chapter that showed the soul selling/post-geno run. Maybe, eventually, I'll get to all that-- especially if this is well received! This chapter was burning a hole in my pocket though, so to speak, and so I decided to throw it into the world since I haven't made progress on any of those other things.
> 
> If you would leave a comment telling me your thoughts, I would greatly appreciate it! I can also be reached at yamiaainferno.tumblr.com-- though my askbox is glitched and I might not respond right away.


End file.
